After seeing a lot of 5 star Yelp-ings, we decided to venture down West Broad to Akida. With a dining room roughly the size of a sardine can, it was no surprise that two couples were ahead of us waiting for a table. However, the line did move faster than I anticipated and we were seated within about 15 minutes.
Two waitresses buzzed through the tiny dining room, efficiently taking orders, delivering plates, and busing tables. We quickly received our drinks and (not so quickly) looked through the menu. What you have to know about my husband and me when we go out for sushi is that we have a routine. I take care of the apps, he takes care of the rolls. My job is usually pretty straightforward. Miso soup for him, salad for me, shrimp shumai to share. While admittedly a little on the boring and painfully predictable side, we know what we like and it does give us a way to easily compare restaurants. All of our appetizers hit the table at almost lightning speed and, we both agreed, they all scored high on the sushi restaurant relativity scale. The miso soup was much richer than the normal watered-down versions. I opted for the seaweed salad and it too had great, consistent (but not overwhelming) flavor. Finally, even more rarely, we could actually tasted the shrimp in the steamed shumai! That always gets bonus points in my book.
Moving onto the main event- sushi rolls. Where my job was easy, my husbands was not. Akida's roll menu is quite extensive. It took a while to get through and even longer to decide. Somewhat amusingly, when our order came out it was apparent that 3 out of the 4 rolls he chose were different variations of the same thing. One plain spicy tuna, one shrimp tempura with spicy tuna on top, and one spicy tuna with tempura flake on top! Needless to say, we did enjoy all forms of spicy tuna. The tempura was even still a little warm from just being fried- a first for me. Our order was topped off with something completely different- the green monster roll (funny enough, probably not named after Fenway Park like those of the same name in Boston). I should have asked to see the menu to figure out what exactly was in it, but it was delicious and had a really light taste which was a great counterbalance to our tempura-spicy tuna bonanza. All of the rolls tasted really fresh which is definitely what I want, especially when it comes to raw fish!
Akida was a great way to get us back into the swing of Friday night sushi!
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